[HN Gopher] Epistemological Relativism
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Epistemological Relativism
Author : yamrzou
Score : 22 points
Date : 2023-07-07 19:14 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.reading.ac.uk)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.reading.ac.uk)
| smitty1e wrote:
| I need a serious ontology ahead of these epistemological
| wranglings.
|
| How can I rate the app in the absence of an OS context?
| pilgrim0 wrote:
| I feel the same every time someone starts using terms without
| defining them. For an analogy, it's like a page o' code minus
| its dependencies. One should define the dependent terms if
| didactics is a concern, which in my opinion should always be. I
| guess this article is relativist on relativism, then?
| nathan_compton wrote:
| How you you ever come up with an ontology without an
| epistemology?
| mjburgess wrote:
| Have you ever stated an epistemology without ontological
| commitments?
|
| How does one speak if not in terms of what exists?
| pilgrim0 wrote:
| Since a vocabulary already exists, then through
| bootstrapping.
| Der_Einzige wrote:
| More evidence for why I tell people that the Cogito was a
| massive mistake. You literally cannot even imagine ontology
| (being) without knowledge or "thought".
|
| The problem is that the appearance of thinking is _not_
| thinking. You don 't actually know for sure that you are
| thinking. P-zombies will gladly tell you "they think therefor
| they are".
|
| My ontological foundation starts with my uniqueness, coming
| from the "creative nothing". Go read stirner or like dharmic
| philosophy for a non-cogitoist take on ontology.
| [deleted]
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| Gut feel and entrails?
| pessimizer wrote:
| You're disrespecting the art of haruspicy:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haruspex
| chasil wrote:
| While there are a bewildering number of types of relativism in
| the parent article, the most common by far is moral relativism,
| which is usually used as a slur against those who do not conform
| to general or specific ideologies.
|
| The wiki also mentions moral relativism in a pejorative context.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_relativism
| civilized wrote:
| Why talk of relativism at all? It's such a vague term.
|
| Does "relative" mean context dependent? Does it mean arbitrary?
| Something else? Nobody who uses this term seems to be in any
| hurry to clarify this.
|
| I suspect it's more of a marketing term, hitchhiking on the
| prestige of Einstein, than a concrete position worth arguing
| about.
| goatlover wrote:
| Epistemological relativism broadly means we don't have access
| to objective truth.
| r_hoods_ghost wrote:
| Given relativism is a term that started being used in English
| philosophy in the 1860s and in German philosophy prior to that
| you'd be dead wrong.
| mcpackieh wrote:
| FWIW, Galilean relativity aka Galilean invariance, the idea
| that Newton's laws are true in all inertial reference frames,
| predates that by a few centuries. But I'm not sure when they
| started using the word relativity for this.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| People talk about everything.
| smif wrote:
| In the context of philosophy it's usually meant in contrast to
| objectivism. So a moral objectivist might say that there exist
| an objective set of universal morals that apply to everyone. In
| contrast, a moral relativist might say that morality depends on
| the culture and that there is no universal set of morals. There
| are shades in between as well.
|
| When using the terms(relativism and objectivism) more
| generally, it means something like that dichotomy of "there
| exist an objective set of univeral X" vs. "there is no
| objective set of X".
|
| Note that in other contexts these terms can have other meanings
| (notably Rand's Objectivism political philosophy means
| something quite different).
| mjburgess wrote:
| Subjective is the opposite of objective.
|
| Most objective phenomena are relative to something else, eg.,
| space.
|
| 'Relative' has no relevance to 'objective'
| smif wrote:
| This is true in everyday conversational English usage of
| the terms, but in the context of philosophy, they acquire
| additional meaning and connotations.
|
| It's kind of like how when we (programmers) say "functional
| programming" we have a very specific concept in mind. If a
| lay person read and interpreted that phrase literally, they
| would probably not have the same concept in mind. They
| might even ask "What is functional programming? Isn't all
| programming functional? How can there be non-functional
| programming? etc."
|
| What we mean when we say it is a style of programming that
| is often contrasted against object-oriented or procedural
| programming styles. We have supplanted the ordinary English
| meaning of these words and attached additional connotations
| and meaning to them. It's the same thing happening with the
| terms above in philosophy.
| chasil wrote:
| This is the Objectivism that was founded by Ayn Rand?
|
| It was quite a force during her life.
|
| One of the most notable adherents was Alan Greenspan, a
| former chairman of the Federal Reserve.
| smif wrote:
| No, we're talking about a completely different usage of the
| term here. Objectivism in this context has nothing to do
| with Rand's Objectivism. It's just the term being
| overloaded with multiple meanings in different contexts.
| slowhadoken wrote:
| I've never cracked open a relativist or subjective philosophy
| text that was readable.
| Der_Einzige wrote:
| Against Method by Paul Feyerabend is extremely readable
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Against_Method
|
| The Unique and Its Propery by Max Stirner is extremely readable
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ego_and_Its_Own
|
| Particularly surprising in the case of Stirner because he was a
| friend of and contemporary of Marx (both Young Hegelians), who
| was writing extremely unreadable works at exactly the same
| time. Consider that they were all reacting to the least
| readable author in the modern cannon, Hegel
| dpierce9 wrote:
| It is quite hard to write about. Suppose you are defending the
| claim. Your conclusion that 'All knowledge is relative'
| inherently seems like a non-relative assertion of knowledge.
| 'All knowledge is relative except this statement' seems like
| cheating (can you say why this one is special without
| absolutes?). So you have to approach the conclusion obliquely
| at best.
| jeremyt wrote:
| You're exactly right. Making an objective claim that
| everything is relative is a performative
| contradiction...which is why the relativists are wrong. The
| objectivists are also wrong.
|
| The truth is somewhere in the middle...which is why nobody
| has won the argument yet.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| > > So you have to approach the conclusion obliquely at
| best.
|
| > Making an objective claim that everything is relative is
| a performative contradiction...which is why the relativists
| are wrong.
|
| Which is maybe why they approach the conclusion obliquely
| at best. If you state the conclusion clearly, the
| contradiction is clearly apparent.
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